No. 14 - Summer Standard

Boundaries and beginnings.

After my last entry, I decided to take some time to reflect. I was gearing up for a couple of upcoming jobs, preparing for a two-week trip to the East Coast to spend time with family and friends, and getting my materials ready for my first two-week, in-person summer session of the Hartford Photo MFA.

But then something interesting happened. For the first time in my career as a director, I excused myself from a job. Without getting into specifics or more than generalities, I had a moment with a client where I felt incredibly disrespected and unseen. It was the first time someone made me feel as though my process and attributes weren’t valued. After a day or two of considering my position within the framework of this upcoming job—still about a month out from production—I politely excused myself. It was a job that would have paid me a proper directing rate, and while it stung to walk away from it financially, it felt good to leave the situation with my self-respect intact and a renewed sense of self-worth.

Sock tan was crazy.

Growing up an athlete and playing lacrosse in college, it’s difficult for me not to think of a sports analogy in most situations. In most sports, coaches will tell you not to “play off your back foot.” In lacrosse, playing off your back foot usually refers to being forced into a weaker or defensive position instead of driving forward in control. When dodging or shooting, if your weight is on your back foot, you lose power, balance, and accuracy. You’re reacting instead of dictating. Defensively, playing off your back foot usually happens when you overcommit on a dodge or fake. You get caught leaning, your weight shifts wrong, and suddenly you’re scrambling to recover. That forces your teammates to slide and cover, which can leave another attacker open… I realized that continuing forward on this commercial job after being disrespected would have been like playing the whole thing from my back foot—overcommitted, off-balance, and already forcing others (crew, collaborators, even myself) to compensate for the imbalance. It’s a bad position to defend from, and an even worse one to lead from.

This experience not only taught me a lot about myself and the standard I intend to hold myself to as a professional, but it also clarified what I want from my collaborators moving forward. I’m not a director or photographer who needs constant pandering—I think being hired to make something on behalf of a client is praise enough. What I do expect is for the lines of communication to remain open, respectful, and healthy. I’ve always gone out of my way to overdeliver, whether within scope or beyond available resources. In return, I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect clients to respect my creative process. Otherwise, what’s the point of collaborating and hiring me in the first place?

Hartford Photo MFA

After a stretch of seafood feasts and city wandering through favorite corners of Boston and NYC with family and friends, Jonah Markowitz—my good friend, longtime collaborator, and now fellow cohort member—and I made our way to Hartford, Connecticut, to begin the first of three two-week summer sessions at the University of Hartford.

We stayed at an Airbnb about ten minutes from campus, close to downtown Hartford. Orientation began on Sunday, July 27, and we arrived not really knowing what to expect. We figured the next two weeks would be filled with long days, plenty of critical thinking, and a whole lot of photography. What unfolded went far beyond anything any of us had imagined.

We shot boxes of black and white 4x5 film, then developed and printed them as silver gelatin prints the very next day. We went through rolls of color medium format, processed them, and spent upwards of 15 hours in the darkroom making c-prints, often well past midnight. We studied the history and evolution of the photobook as an art form, handling some of the most iconic works in the field and turning through their pages one by one. And we spent hours having our own work critiqued by legendary photographers.

It is an experience that deserves its own full write-up, and at some point I will get around to it. But even just a couple of weeks out, I can already say with confidence that it was a pivotal moment for me as an artist.

C-Prints made from my work.

Upcoming Fall + New Website Coming

As Fall approaches, I’m excited to dive into both some new commercial projects and to go deeper into my personal practice as a photographer. I feel fortunate to be part of one of the world’s top Photo MFA programs at Hartford. Because it’s a limited-residency program, I’ll remain fully available for commercial work throughout the year, with the exception of two weeks each summer. It’s truly the only way I could realistically pursue my MFA.

Here in Napa, the wine harvest kicks off in the next couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to getting back out into the vineyards to capture the process for both longtime clients and a few new ones. I’ve got some exciting projects brewing on both the motion and stills side that I’ll be sharing later this Fall.

And last but not least, I’m working with a web designer in France to build a completely new, custom website. I’ll share more as it gets closer to completion and the eventual launch, but needless to say, it’s already looking pretty rad.

Wrap Up

From the start, my intention with Ground(ed) Glass has been to keep my experiences as a director and photographer approachable and transparent, in the hope that my decisions or mistakes might help someone else navigating something similar, particularly in the commercial space.

I was hesitant to write about my decision to step away from a recent job, but it felt wrong to ignore an experience that was so challenging emotionally, professionally, and financially. Glazing over it would have been easier, but ultimately it would do a disservice both to myself as a creative and to the subscribers who come here for real stories that might help shape their own paths.

Overall, I think the biggest takeaway is to know yourself in the moments when it feels most difficult. I would never suggest walking away from an opportunity to make a living, but I do believe it’s worth doing if the tradeoff is compromising the very reason a client hired you in the first place. Recognizing when you are being set up to fail, or when unprofessionalism and disrespect cross the line, is crucial. At the end of the day, your name is attached to that project. And that shit lasts.

Chat soon.